A Slow North-east Wind: Review of North

Abstract

I had the uncanny feeling, reading these poems, of listening to the thing itself, the actual substance of historical agony and dissolution, the tragedy of a people in a place: the Catholics of Northern Ireland. Yes, the Catholics: there is no equivalent Protestant voice. Poetry is as unfair as history, though in a different way. Seamus Heaney takes his distances — archaeology, Berkeley, love-hate of the English language, Spain, County Wicklow (not the least distant) — but his Derry is always with him, the ash, somehow, now standing out even more on the forehead.

The pigskin’s scourged until his knuckles bleed.

The air is pounding like a stethoscope.

(‘Orange Drums, Tyrone, 1966’)